Indoors 95.5% of the Time

Place Lab that promotes a mixed approach to positioning (GPS, WiFi, GSM and Bluetooth) are gaining some mainstream attention in Cnet’s article “Intel experiments with Wi-Fi as GPS substitute“. One of Place Lab’s key phrase is that “humans spend most of their time inside or in dense environments where GPS does not work”. To help prove the point, Ian Smith (Intel Senior Researcher) wore a backpack for 3.5 months with a monitor. It found that, on average, he spent only 4.5 percent of each day outside. However, the experiment was most probably ran in rainy Seattle.

The article contains a flagrant inaccuracy, by mentioning that “wireless can also determine height and thus figure out what floor of a particular building a person is on”. If it was the case, this blog would not be named “7.5th Floor”. I guess the write meant “roughly predict in some cases” instead of “determine”.